The sky is eggshell blue and goes on for ever. The birds are singing. There is jam for tea. "A lovely day for hanging yourself," says Simon Armstrong's Vanya. There are times when Andrew Hilton's revival in Stephen Mulrine's dry-as-a-martini translation feels like 19th-century Russian Beckett. At others, it's like a mad farce where everybody is vying to be top of the class in unhappiness. Indeed, Paul Currier's Astrov, with his clipped tones, can be a little precious – like a precocious prep-school boy. The men are big babies in need of the soothing ministrations of Nanny (Jacqueline Tong), or hankering after the beautiful, unattainable Yelena (Alys Thomas) – a woman who, like a sly cat, knows her own power but is incapable of using it wisely. "She's so lovely," says Vanya as if he wants to gobble her up like jam.

A few first-night uncertainties of tone and timing aside, this production has all Hilton's hallmarks of simplicity and clarity, and sits beautifully on the Old Vic stage that has been extended outwards, as in Georgian times. The result, aided by Harriet de Winton's breathtakingly simple design, is so direct that I started to feel as if this play was being performed just for me.

Hilton's production is also very funny because it is so unnervingly merciless. He gives us the characters warts and all, allows us to see them in all their absurdity and self-absorption. There is nothing kind about his approach, and because it is so unsparing, you hardly notice the moment when laughter dies and farce turns to the tragedy of long lives lived entirely without hope.